HD 'Guinness & Harp'
by tigersilver
Summary: AU, EWE. Post-Hogwarts implied. Harry's out for a quick pint after work. Draco stops by his watering hole, just in passing. Speaking in forked tongues, as usual.


Author: **tigersilver**  
Paring: H/D  
Rating: PG-13-R  
Word Count: 1800  
Summary/Warnings: AU, EWE. Harry's out for a quick one after work. Malfoy stops in, just passing. 

**HD 'Guinness and Harp'**

"What in the name of Salazar Slytherin's bleeding balls is that, Potter?"

"Black-and-tan, Malfoy."

"Is it…Muggle beer, then?"

"It is, indeed." Harry took a great slurp to rid it of the tiny amount of foam Hannah had left on the top—and to ramp up his courage. He sloshed the pint towards Malfoy's fascinated gaze, grinning. "Want some?'

Malfoy's eyes instantly snapped from the dual shaded hues of brown to Harry's green eyes; locked on to them like twin heat-seeking missiles.

"Of that? Of yours, Potter?"

"Well, yes, Malfoy. Don't see anyone else here offering, do you?"

Malfoy sniffed and raised his chin, silently giving Harry to understand that if Malfoy should wish it, there would indeed be a great many people, of both sexes, and in droves and hordes, offering. However, as the faint twitch of his upper lip added, Malfoy would allow this somewhat whimsical impunity of Harry's to slide, just this once.

What Malfoy didn't say—silently or otherwise—was whether he'd be taking Harry up on his genial offer to share a sip.

"Well? What're you waiting for git?" Harry prodded. "Try some; see if you like it."

He slid his barstool closer, under pretext of allowing Malfoy easier access. Malfoy, without seeming to move, was subtly doing the exact same thing, in reverse.

"Hmm, Potter," was what he said, and Harry kept his eyes fixed very firmly on those grey ones. He liked them: how direct they were, how completely uncowed, how clear and fiercely intense. "Well…"

"Worried?" Harry decided abruptly that this was a war he was engaged in, and one he planned to win. Malfoy, the sneaky git, was waffling, possibly contemplating castling; Harry was not planning on allowing his offer to be either diverted or shrugged off. "Think I'm diseased or something, you berk? Didn't brush my teeth this morning?"

Malfoy snorted with honest delight, the first crack in that very smooth armour he wore. Teflon, if it were Muggle; a warding shield so incredibly powerful it was well nigh impervious, if Harry thought of it in Wizarding terms. And then Malfoy grinned—finally! Making Harry wait like that, the silly prick!—and swept an imperious hand out, snatching the glass straight out of Harry's lax grasp.

"Hardly, Potter." He downed it, throat moving in slow, luxurious glugs that nearly sent Harry's prick into matching spasms and the consequent sad lonely end of splashing his own shorts, and to Malfoy's credit, polished it off straightaway, without a single pause for breath, strange brew and all. With nary a cough after, nor a scowl for its undeniable Muggleness. Harry tightened his fingers into a fist and held the fuck back on his overriding impulse—if Malfoy could manage that!

If Malfoy could manage _that_, then no fucking way was he wasting a perfectly good stiffie to his newly washed Levis! He'd far bigger fish to fry; now, it only remained to weave the net.

"Well?" he asked again, through tightly clamped teeth, after Malfoy returned him the empty with another fleeting flash of a toothy smile. "You like, then?"

Their stools were practically atop one another in the interim; Malfoy's lean thigh was pressed quite firmly against those same favourite Muggle Levis. Harry had his free hand tucked well below the bar's shiny, sticky surface without even a blink between beats, and was stroking a question across immaculate grey flannel trousers, fingertips describing curlicues of ever more urgent queries over the unmistakable surge of interest he felt.

He knew the answer, of course. Had known from the moment Malfoy's teeth and eyes glinted—from even before he swallowed down Harry's pint—but still. Harry was a polite young man, and he'd been raised quite strictly.

"Want another cool one, Malfoy?" he said, and Malfoy cocked his chin at him, lids half lowered. Harry shrugged. "It _is_ unseasonably warm, today. And…I'm buying."

Malfoy's shimmery eyes said _yes_, and his chin, angled down like that, it said clearly, _look above me, Potter—see the lips_. The incipient laugh lines tugging those pink strips of flesh a tad thinner told Harry he _was found out, completely, _but that Malfoy _didn't mind it in the slightest_ and the single arching brow asked him only this: _what are you waiting for, git? An engraved invitation?_

"Depends," Malfoy replied, coolly sardonic as always. He blinked at Harry very slowly and Harry was damned sure his plain cotton shorts had suddenly caught fire...nay, exploded into flame so hot he was bathed in copious sweat. His denims were surely next. "Must I drink it here, Potter?"

"Er, no, as a matter of fact, Malfoy."

Harry found he still had control of his facial muscles; they allowed for the quick dip of chin and the polite social smile. Too, it was terribly kind and convenient of his knees and arms to function properly, he thought, rising to his feet in a fast, easy motion. He took hold of Malfoy's elbow, and barely restrained himself from leaving possessive bruises.

"As it happens, I've a few Muggle beers in my pantry, at home. Guinness and Harp. Mayhap even an odd Redcap, left over. Care to vacate this watering hole with me—sample a few variations?"

If the forty or sixty odd sets of eyes trained on them—mostly discreetly, naturally, but not all—were expecting fireworks or worse, they were doomed to disappointment. Malfoy followed Potter up in a sinuous rise that gave lie to it being only Eve who tempted Adam. Harry was of the solid opinion the sodding sexy Serpent must have had a go at him before that, and the poor old Biblical Muggle man must've been spoilt for choice, after.

Now he—_he_ had no such issues. He'd been spoilt for the Serpent in his particular Eden from the get-go.

"That," Malfoy inclined his head, and his hair caught the sconces that lined the barroom and dimmed them to mute insignificance, "sounds a viable course of action, Potter. Shall we? I find I am…thirsty. It is, indeed, very humid."

Sod his bloody clothes, Harry ranted mentally, giving in to the overwhelming urge to close his eyes ever so briefly. If he didn't fuck Malfoy—or if Malfoy didn't shag _him_—in the next five bloody minutes, his bloody skin would peel off, solely due to the sodding inferno raging in his bits.

"Of course," he remarked calmly, and glanced curiously at Malfoy's elbow, which he'd not released for an instant. "Mind if we Side-Along then?"

The bar—crowded on a Friday and packed to the gills with Ministry employees and their significant others— collectively sucked in a gasping breath. Malfoy and Potter were within spitting distance—no, closer than that. Imminent sharing of that same spit was a far more accurate call for the rapidly shrinking space left between them, and there were definitely fireworks alight and sizzling…just not the sort most of bar's inhabitants expected.

"Of course you may, Potter," Malfoy nodded agreeably enough, the very epitome of a polite gentleman, and took the opportunity to close the distance from spitting to full-out snogging. "As only you know where we're going." His lips practically brushed Harry's as he murmured each syllable. Harry, hero to the core, belted up his incessantly demanding libido manfully and fiercely refrained from goggling.

He grinned instead—had he ceased smiling _once,_ from the moment Malfoy had strolled into his favourite bar and plonked his arse down on the stool next to him? Harry didn't believe so, _no_!— enjoying the incredible close-up his specs gave him of the multiple hues that made up the mutable grey, the flash of white marble that was Malfoy's teeth in a glancing _here now-gone again_ smile, the elastic stretch of mobile skin over a firmly moulded jaw he literally ached to lick. The man was fucking delectable; Harry was beyond smitten.

"Oh, I think you'll know it, Malfoy, once you see it," he smirked, exerting monumental effort to remain coherent. "You'd be surprised," he added lightly, playfully, and mentally patted himself on the back for not merely grunting "Ugh, _mine_!" as he really wanted. Not that anyone with a brain cell alive would think to get between them—not now. Instead, Harry gathered his thoughts from where they were freely ranging over the entangled and oddly related questions of how quickly he could undo all Malfoy's many buttons and how nasty it would truly be to simply shag on his ancient hearthrug instantly upon arrival, half-dressed, and attempted to seriously think of the three things he was required to think of in order to Apparate away successfully.

That he had to think at all was a measure of how this riddle-speaking, Sphinx-like blond git affected him.

"Oh? Really, Potter? You don't say."

Malfoy raised the other eyebrow, nominally expressing interest. Fortunately Harry was skilled at deciphering grey-eyed, sharp-tongued gits who spoke obliquely.

"I'm all intrigued now, I admit." That actually meant the ruddy cryptic bloke was game for pretty much anything Harry might think to try, so Harry ceased his pointless worrying over the state of his hearthrug and simply stuck his other hand out, the free one, with the intention of clamping down and hanging the Hades on. Which he did do, yes.

"Are you…ready? Malfoy?"

And this—this was the absolute killer—the very moment of decision. Do or die. An abortive scuffle from the rear of the bar threatened vaguely to impinge on Harry's consciousness—could have been Ron, but he didn't really think so; more likely it was Parkinson, who had the instincts of tigress protecting her young when it came to Malfoy—but the small excitement fell to inconsequence when compared to the incendiary burn in grey eyes.

Wide grey eyes, which then quickly narrowed and became piercing, in a fixated, almost arrogant sweep-down-and-stare up the full length and breadth of Harry's body—a speaking look that most particularly announced to the world at large Draco Malfoy had made a life-altering decision.

"I'm more than ready, Potter," he snarled—it could've also been a purr of sorts, that, or so Harry thought fondly; later, he promised himself, it would most definitely be. "Have been for ages. Shall we?"

Whatever scuffle was going on in the rear of the bar subsided, and in another blink there was not a sound to be heard—not a gulp, not a swallow, not the crack of a beer nut or a crisp, shattering between teeth.

"Oh, yes—I think so," Harry remarked lightly, and had his answer devoured, almost before it made it past his dry lips. Abruptly, and by a chewing, nibbling mouth that more than matched those molten eyes: a brilliant pyre, into which he cast himself both with gratitude and fervour. Malfoy snogged Potter like a man starving—no, like a handsome golden god, presented with his long-awaited offering.

And still Harry Apparated them both, sans Splinching, arriving safely in a swirl of green sparks at his remade and done up Grimmauld Place and exactly square, dead-centre, upon his remarkably available hearth rug, because Harry Potter was—no argument there—the single greatest living Wizard in the world.

Excepting, of course, for the one point: he was no longer _single_.


End file.
